


After the storm

by Qelinor



Category: Tsuritama
Genre: AU, Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 05:56:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6692281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qelinor/pseuds/Qelinor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Yuki failed to account for a wind gust and missed the target in the last storm. Maybe Haru’s barrier crumbled too early. Maybe Akira lost control of the boat. No one would tell for sure now why their last fishing had gone wrong. Those left on the shore still have something to talk about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the storm

Haru was somewhere very close. He kept silent, but Urara would see him soon anyway, would ask him most directly and intimately, eyes to eyes, mind to mind, “Do you―”

A sudden blast stopped his thoughts. So very close, the sea mass inflated, the water compressed his ear and sideline sensors as if wishing to flatten him, to tear into molecules and mix with the salts and water of the ocean. 

Haru… Haru’s still over there, he thought before signals from all his senses inverted into a black nothing. He didn’t hear next missile explosions.

***  
The ambience was hot and stuffy. His gills rose with effort and pumped warm, low-oxygen water through. Then vision came back – the light was too bright after the sea depths. Then, tactile sense followed – the space around was narrow, pressure and water were low. If he stood upright his dorsal fin would stick out in the air. Urara stayed lying on his side, on an uneven stone slippery with algae, in a shallow pool of sea water. Hearing returned – mechanical droning floated from afar, together with shrill cries of large white seabirds that feed on small fry. Urara was one-bite dish for them. Soon they would notice a bright purple spot at the shore, and then only response speed would decide whether he was first to force the witless local animal to drop him to the sea, or the bird crushed his scull.

Suddenly – another sort of ‘sudden’, a slow one, noticeable to all senses – the ground vibrated with a rustle of pebbles, a large moving shadow loomed over. Was that one of the creatures whose primitive metal vessels he had seen on the sea surface? When he had first come across them the vessels were shooting at each other, and he did not have any wish to contact them. Besides, they used different technical principles and would not be able to help him to fix his spaceship. Well, this planet had run a lot of circles around its sun since then.

Here they were, staring at each other, two forms of life from different worlds. He hoped that the locals became more peaceful in the last years, or that this creature was not as belligerent or fish-eating as the rest of them, and would not try to eat him before he collects enough data to imitate the form of this species.

Yet isn’t it strange, two thirds of this planet are occupied by oceans yet intelligent life has developed on firm ground…  
At last, perception systems reported readiness. He lay still and concentrated.

Air distortion hid the transformation process.

Urara made a tentative breath. Right, now his lungs could absorb the oxygen directly from air, without mediation of water. He looked around to get used to different visual angle and perspective.

Beside him, a girl squatted. He interpreted visual information in an instance. She was just a whitebait. If they both stood up she’d barely reach up to his shoulder.

But his experience did not suffice yet to understand the expression of her widened black eyes. Was it an amazement? Or fear? Or puzzlement? Or anger?

Urara waited for her next actions. 

“Are you an alien?” he heard.

So, the natives used sound waves for communication. Meaning of new words floated up in his mind. You, an address to interlocutor, alien, something different, from another world or planet, extraterrestrial being. Intonation of a question. An answer required. His body should be able to produce sounds too.

“Yes,” he heard his own voice, lower and less sonant than that of the whitebait girl. “Is it bad, to be an alien?”

“Sometimes,” she replied. “Did you come to conquer our world?”

Urara came close to choke on air.

“Certainly not! It is not… It is too primitive. Those who can travel between galaxies wish only for peace. It is just that my spaceship is broken, and I am waiting for help.”

The girl nodded, still fumbling with the hem of her clothes.

“Where’s Coco?” another question sounded even more insistent. “What have you done with Coco?”

The sense of the phrase escaped him.

“What is Coco?” he returned the question carefully.

The girl frowned but did not reply. Intuition advised him that pursed lips together with frown can denoted dissatisfaction, irritation, or offence…

“I’m sorry,” he added just to be on the safe side.

In the background he noticed a large dead local fish. One more fish, smaller. Lots more of small fry. The ones stunned by the shockwaves. And the smelly corpses reminded him of another one. More important one. He turned around and looked for pale golden glitter of a small scaled body. But no, the shore was strewn only with bleak silver and brown slime of algae. He stood up and stumbled to the water, struggling to control the too-long limbs. He knelt into the ebbing foam. Resonance of the whole mass of sea pierced him. And he called as loud as he can, 

Only splashes and hustle came back with the waves, and the depth of water hills was silent. The air, though, was filled with loud whisper.

“Go back, don’t do that!” the girl pulled him by his elbow, sprang back from another approaching wave, then returned and pulled him back again.

Urara let her take him to dry pebble stripe, to the shadow of high rocks, away from occasional glances. The girl asked him to stay there and ran away. He still failed to guess her mood but did not fear her. Even if she brought grown-ups with her, there was a pool of sea water left by the storm within reach of hand. He did not fear anything if water was near. Well, and the whitebait girl did not seem to be able to do any harm.

Urara stared into the puddle. Water mirror reflected a tall lean guy with long blue-and-pink hair. He wondered what Haru’s camouflage looked like. Haru must have gotten out ashore too, that’s why he was not replying. Urara calmed down a little.

The girl returned alone, with a bunch of clothes, a bit too short for him, but the width was fitting.

"I’m Sakura,” she said while he shuffled a short, knee-long breeches on and familiarized himself with the clasps.

“My name is Urara,” he replied and bowed his head on a hunch.

 

After the clothes were changed, and his spacesuit was hidden in the rocks, Sakura took his hand and dragged him away again. Urara watched the land civilization curiously. Dwellings made of stone and other strange materials that were strewn around in pieces on dust and mud. Right angles and flat planes mixed with broken or frilled lines, edges, pits, cracks.  
Triangles of some transparent materials sticking out in embrasures like shark’s teeth. That material looked like plexigel of his spacesuit’s helmet but plexigel did not break into such small sharp shards that crumbled under his borrowed shoes.

“Misaki-san’s shop was there.” The girl sniffled suddenly. “I used to eat ice-cream there or to stay after school if my brother was late“.

Some words were not clear, but Urara discerned the past tense. 

“What has happened to the ‘shop’?” he asked out of courtesy while watching a pile of carbon black panels and stones. It did not look like a dwelling, and Urara suspected he was missing some point. Around the pile, people in bright yellow clothes were taking panels and stones apart, metal machinery was humming loudly. Sakura looked at the alien askance but answered anyway.

“A missile from warship hit it. Another one struck there. There was the café of Naoko-san with the best cupcakes in the world. And over there, there was workshop of Shingo-san, he painted pictures of the sea. I liked to examine them close and then look from afar. It’s good that Haru ordered everyone to leave Enoshima, to keep them safe. Now they live with relatives while their houses are rebuilt. The missiles did not reach my house, just window glass was broken.”

“Haru?” Urara stuck to the single word that mattered to him. Sakura nodded.

“Yes, he’s an alien too.”

Urara smiled as his guesses were confirmed. Haru was really onshore, now he was probably loafing around. What if Sakura guided Urara right to him?

She lead him by the hand further and higher uphill, away from the sea. Smooth grey road made place to square slabs fitted neatly together if one overlooked rare dents and holes. The same as in the houses… Suddenly the picture clicked together in Urara’s mind. All houses were rectangular blocks with square windows and entrances, and the ones he had seen earlier on the way were ruins! He looked back. It was emergency works, not an everyday life. What was going on here, a war? Thoughts of Haru flared red alert again.

“Why did they shoot? Are they your enemies?” he asked.

Sakura looked straight in front of her and answered slowly, as if recollecting someone else’s words.

“No, no. One alien seized the crew of the ships and made them dance – all people start to dance when the alien touches them through water. TV said it. Maybe someone from the ship crew pushed a fire button. Then there was a large wave from rockets, then –“

Words clicked in his head, notions inside of the words shifted and engaged with other words with a dry pounding of his heart, and he saw the whole ominous picture. With him in the center, right? Urara stumbled, losing control over the body. He stepped aside, leant at a high tilted post to wait for the end of sudden weakness and darkened vision.

Was it – his – fault?

Sakura asked him something but her words did not drift through tingle in his ears.

“Nothing serious”. He did not hear his own voice. “It is hot. The air is dry”.

Didn’t she guess? No, evidently, otherwise she would not have helped him or talked to him. She would rather call for armed grown-ups to neutralize the culprit, to revenge for all evil done. Urara felt it is not quite honest to hide his findings, but the words got stuck in his throat. He wanted to live, for all it was worth. And to find Haru.

In a couple of minutes, he was able to follow the girl again. The houses made place to high plants behind a fence. Sakura went to a portal in the fence.

“This is botanical garden,” she noted as they passed through the gate. “Yuki’s grandma works here.”

Urara did not ask who Yuki was. He did not need to – soon the girl stopped near a small hill all covered with multicolored plants around four pictures of men. Four faces were absolutely different, the only common feature was a black frame.

Haru, where are you, Urara repeated in his mind while listening to her carelessly.

“It’s Akira,” she pointed to the leftmost man with head wrapped in some cloth, and keen squinted eyes. “Sometimes he was outright cheeky. And the photo is not right, he had always carried a cute duck named Tapioca with him, they were friends. And this is Yuki,” she nodded at the next portrait of a younger man, blinding redhead, and looking sort of scared. “At first he was awfully shy and could even forget to say hello, but later he turned out very kind and brave… And this,” she raised her voice and leant to touch the third picture with fingertips, a dark-haired shaggy guy with glasses (of the rectangular form favored by the Earthmen), “this is my brother, Natsuki. He was the best fisherman, he’s even got called a Fisher Prince! Yes, we quarreled sometimes but then always made peace later. He was always pampering me after mom died. And now he’s gone! Do you know why?” She was almost yelling. “Because they went to the sea to fish that alien out, to make him stop forcing everyone dance or shoot. Then no one would suffer – the Duck agents, people on the shore, the guys, even that stupid alien!” She sobbed and rubbed her eyes with knuckles. “But they did not make it in time. We watched web TV, cameras on big war ships were working until the ships sank too – the first missile hit Captain’s boat, or near it, we did not see clearly, with all the splash and wrecks flying. We hoped – they wore life vests, they would not drown…”

She said no more, hugged herself as if afraid to break apart.

“And in two days, the Duck people called and said they’d found them, and… and gave us back a box, mind you! A box instead of a living brother. Like when mom died... And to Yuki’s grandmother. And I don’t know if Akira has a family, or he’d just get a name plate on the common memorial to people from the ships…”

She could not say a word more. She squatted, embraced her knees and cried. Thin shoulders with white dress straps were shuddering, dark hair fell into her face, but Urara heard, felt water running down her cheeks. It was pain, he realized at last, a pain too big for such a small fry. And he was the reason.

He knelt down slowly, touched lightly her head in the spot where pink skin strip showed through the hair. Urara said the first thing that came to his mind to distract her:

“Who is the fourth?”

Sakura glanced up at him in astonishment, she even stopped crying.

“What? It’s Haru! Didn’t you know? He went to the sea with the guys. Your eyes are so much like his. He was lost, sure, but if he was a fish who’d find him offshore –“

Urara did not hear her already. Haru? He stared at the face in a wreath of blonde locks, at cheerful purple eyes. Was that Haru? That was his human form? Outer similarity was not evident, but Urara had tuned in the human mimics and recognized the essence of his Haru in the wide smile in the picture – the flamboyant one, a soul of any company, ready to come to help anyone even if he was not asked to. Even to travel across the galaxy to rescue a friend from whitebait horde. 

He drew in and breathed out alien dry air with effort, against titanic pressure in the chest as if a missile exploded nearby again. Burning sensation grew in his eyes, the world blurred into mere shadows of color. Unsurprised, he felt water dripping down his cheeks. He touched it with fingertips, licked the drop, bitter-salty like sea. Sea was escaping from his body, sea wanted to flow out, seep through underground pores into the ocean and search for a small, pale yellow fish…

“He…” Urara tried to speak at last, “he did not answer me now. Maybe he is too far...”

White shadow moved by and disappeared. Sakura was gone. Urara could not think of her anymore; explosions, shockwaves, and Haru had always been weaker than he, weaker even than his younger sister, what was her name… Haru, Haru, and it was his fault…

Salty drops were falling on pale hands and evaporating at once. He contained too little of sea to cover the whole planet with a call even if he cried days long.

Crunchy steps of Sakura returned him to reality. What else did she want? Urara wiped his eyes, blinked. The girl handed him a small cylindrical container with… water?

“Hold it,” her voice was husky, her eyes red. “Haru was always complaining that he dried out when he walked long under the sun. You must be feeling bad too.”

Urara nodded, took the light, crumpling transparent container from her. With a third attempt he found out the cap on the narrow neck should be unscrewed. The water was sweet and cold, with bubbles tingling his throat and skin under collar. The clothes had belonged to her brother, he realized belatedly. He raised his head to thank her… and stopped under her gaze.

“Why did you do that?” she asked very quietly but clearly. “It was you over there at Akemi reef; it was you whom they wanted to catch… It was your fault that they…”

He froze, he forgot how to breathe.

"I didn't know and didn't do anything…” he forced the words through at last. “I didn’t know what I did. I just wanted to see Haru again. I wanted him to hear me, to tell him how I missed him, how desperate I was when I thought I'd stay on this planet forever. My ship crashed, communication lost... And suddenly, after endless years, I heard his voice. I wanted to scream and dance with joy. Like in a dream or legends of the travelers lost in alien worlds. In juvenile times, I was always finding him if I drew a lot to play a rescuer in a game of shipwrecks. As for him, he’d get distracted easily and forget he was seeking for anyone. I had accepted that for him I was just one of hundreds of fellow whitebait. And for me he was … But when he came for me – it meant he noticed that I was missing, he wanted to find me. He found me. It meant I did mean something for him too! And A called him with all my force, in all ranges, without thinking what effect it had on the surface dwellers. If I only knew what was going on at the shore… But I didn’t even think about it. I am sorry. I understand you, I know what it means to lose someone you love–“

“You don’t know a thing!” she yelled suddenly and pushes him in the chest. Caught off-guard, Urara tripped back-first on the ground, remainders of water splashed out at the flowers near Haru’s picture. Sakura fell on her knees near him and wept again loudly, hitting him on the shoulders and chest with her sharp small fists.

“It’s not fair! Not fair at all! You don’t know! It was her! It was her who wanted to look for you and pleaded Haru to go with her, she thought you’d hear him for sure and answer him! She knew you never noticed her and had eyes only for her brother, and still she wanted to find you! She kept Haru on the track... She was telling me everything, she believed I was just a small silly Earthian girl who liked all strange and colorful things like aliens. She didn’t notice me too. You aliens are so stupid, stupid… She was really shy and thought she wasn’t pretty, with her glasses. But she tried her best to be smart, serious and brave. And she wore spacesuit all the time for you to notice it and to see that she was not human. And you – you don’t even remember her name! You didn’t even notice her. You caught her without even… noticing…”

She was telling something else, unintelligible behind the sobs. Urara sat up, grabbed her for a reason unclear even to him. He did not even dare to order her to shut up and walk away. And he did not know how to console her. He just reached out to another living being in the desolate Universe, as if there was another way to communicate feelings without words or water.  
Sakura did not break away, weeping she dug her face into his chest, in her brother’s t-shirt. They stayed that way for a long time, and at last she calmed down, wiped her nose by the back of her hand smearing tears over her face. Suddenly she moved away, made a strange face and hissed:

“You don’t even know, and everyone saw it – Haru was really head over ears in love with Yuki! He even told me once that when he finds you and returns you to the home planet he’d get back to the Earth and live with Yuki. For all Yuki’s life! Get it!”  
At the back of his mind, Urara wondered how acutely human body responded to any shifts of soul. Any distress would disturb breathing and heartbeat, make blood rush in the ears like breaking waves. Probably, Sakura saw him going all pale, as she switched out of that mood and pulled him timidly by the short sleeve. Her voice trembled.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. It’s just that… I felt really bad, and I though if I make you feel pain too it would make two of us. And it would not be so lonely. I should not have told it to you. Please forgive me, Urara.”

Startled at the sound of his name, he hugged the girl once more. A petty relief spread deep inside, under the bitterness: he didn’t own what he deemed lost. His heartbeat leveled up, water stayed inside. And his thoughts ran smoothly further. Haru’s flying saucer should be nearby – he and his sister must have traveled here somehow, right? It was possible to find the ship, to return home. Except that it did not have any meaning now. The sense of life remained here, drowned at Enoshima shore, smashed by the waves and blasts.

“I… I’ll return to the sea.” Urara said wincing at the false tone in his voice. “I will look for them both. I have survived, so maybe they–”

“Okay,” Sakura calmed down too. “Just.. if you, well… find them too late… Please bring anything back. I have just a dozen of photos on the phone.”

“Fine. And would you show me the ways of living here?”

The world came to a sort of balance on the ruins.

“Okay,” Sakura nodded and leant onto his shoulder.


End file.
